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    ‘I Think We’re Cousins?’: ‘Ain’t Too Proud’ Performers Realize Link

    A post in a family Facebook group led an actor and a musician in the Broadway musical to discover that they are distant cousins.Before the curtain comes down each night on “Ain’t Too Proud,” the Broadway jukebox musical that follows the rise of the R&B group the Temptations, the cast turns around in unison and lowers down to one knee as the lights go up to illuminate the show’s 17-piece band.After playing more than two hours of Motown classics, the guitarists, the drummers and the string section wave as the audience applauds.During the curtain call on Feb. 28, 2020, the day Matt Manuel made his Broadway debut in the flashy role of David Ruffin, he bowed alone, then with his fellow Temptations, all wearing gleaming white jackets and ties. When he turned and knelt down to give the musicians the spotlight, he thought to himself vaguely that the violist had cool hair.Two days later, he received a message from that violist, Andrew Griffin, who had been in the band since the show opened in 2019.“So…I think we’re cousins…?” Griffin wrote to Manuel in an Instagram message.Manuel responded with the requisite number of exclamation points for such a discovery: “Omg yes we are cousins!!!!!!!!”In fact, they’re second cousins once removed, according to the family tree recently drawn by Griffin’s mother. (She’s enthusiastic about genealogy.) Manuel’s great-grandmother is Griffin’s grandfather’s older sister, with 14 years separating the two siblings.Manuel made his Broadway debut as David Ruffin in the show just weeks before the shutdown.Julieta CervantesThe realization was a delight and a comfort to Manuel, 29, who, in January 2020, arrived in New York from Detroit after he had been cast as Ruffin, replacing Ephraim Sykes. It was a daunting move across the country: He left quickly with only two suitcases — the rest of his stuff remained in his parents’ garage — and it was his first time living independently, away from his family.He had always heard that Griffin’s side of the family eagerly supported their relatives however they could.“Wherever you’re at, they will take you up in a heartbeat,” said Manuel, whose professional acting debut was playing Marvin Gaye on tour in “Motown: The Musical.” “If you’ve got family, you’ve got everything that you need.”Griffin, 35, who grew up in Pittsburgh and moved to New York about six years ago to advance his music career, was shocked to learn that a new leading member in “Ain’t Too Proud” was a blood relative.“I knew nothing of him — absolutely nothing,” Griffin said. “I saw him onstage whenever they turn around and the musicians wave. That’s about it.”If it wasn’t for a video of the curtain call on Feb. 28, they might never have realized it. Manuel and his family had missed an earlier reunion, and the one scheduled for 2020 was canceled because of the pandemic.In February 2020, Manuel’s mother, Amiesha Williams, traveled to New York City to see his debut, and the day after, she posted a YouTube video of the curtain call on a family Facebook page used to plan reunions.“You know how proud moms are,” Manuel said, “they just brag.”The post garnered clapping emojis, encouraging remarks and then a comment from Griffin’s mother, Linda, pointing out that her son was in the center of the video playing the viola. She didn’t realize who Matt Manuel was and why Williams had posted the video of him in the first place.“How do you know him?” Linda Griffin wrote in the comments section.Williams replied the next day: “I’m sorry I fell asleep so I’m just seeing this. Matthew is my son.”As comments flew back and forth about the specifics of their genealogy, Manuel was onstage crooning into the microphone as Ruffin, the original lead voice of “My Girl.” Griffin was not far away, playing his viola beneath the stage. When Manuel returned to his dressing room, he saw a text from his mother: He had a cousin in the band and he should go meet him.“I’m like, ‘What does he look like?’” Manuel said. “And she’s just like, ‘His name is Drew and he plays the viola.’”Outside the stage door, Manuel signed autographs for a throng of giddy Broadway fans, glancing back every so often to look for the viola player. When Griffin walked out, the two introduced themselves tentatively. “I think we’re cousins,” Griffin said. Two fans holding a poster stared at them blankly, Manuel recalled.The pair did the natural thing to do when you discover a family member: schedule a lunch date. They made plans for the following week, but soon, the airborne virus that had been spreading across the world had producers worrying. Then, on March 12, less than two weeks after Manuel’s debut, the industry shut down.“Maybe we should postpone,” Griffin remembered saying.During the lockdown, Griffin fled to North Carolina to hunker down with his girlfriend and her family; Manuel went back to Detroit, thinking the pause in the production would be a good opportunity to drive back the rest of his stuff in a U-Haul.The shutdown stretched on and on, keeping performers like Griffin and Manuel out of a regular job and perpetually wondering when they would get a return date. Griffin spent time composing, something he didn’t always have time to do with a full performance schedule. Manuel grieved the loss of a relative, spent time with family and tried to reconnect with the part of himself that wasn’t a performer, always eager to entertain those around him.The cousins fell out of touch, their discovery outside of the stage door seeming like another era, where fans mingled freely with actors after exiting a tightly packed theater.But last month, the show took back its place at the Imperial Theater. The initial days were all work: Manuel, who lives in Harlem, tried to get his body accustomed to doing back flips, splits and microphone tricks for seven shows a week. Griffin, who lives in Williamsburg, had four days to sit back in front of his music stand with the rest of the band and get songs like “You’re My Everything” and “Get Ready” back into their muscle memory.“Going down the street for the first day of work, I started to well up a little bit,” Griffin said. “It was like nothing had really changed — there were still jokes and stuff written on our stands.”They hadn’t gotten a moment to spend time together until late last month, when a member of the show’s production staff had a birthday party and they were both invited.“Now let’s pick up where we left of,” Manuel said. “Actually go eat a meal and talk and, you know, gossip.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: Documentaries on Kevin Garnett and Jake Burton Carpenter

    A pair of new documentaries, one on HBO and one on Showtime, look at two very different sports figures.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 8-14. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: FERGUSON RISES (2021) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This documentary about the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown Jr., who was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, is built around interviews with Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr. It looks at how the movement that grew in response to Brown’s killing helped pushed forward conversations about policing around the country, and at the elder Brown’s activism in the years since. The documentary, directed by Mobolaji Olambiwonnu, won an audience award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.TuesdayDEAR RIDER (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. The life and legacy of the snowboarding entrepreneur Jake Burton Carpenter is the subject of this new documentary. Carpenter, who died in 2019, helped popularize and legitimize snowboarding as a sport through his company, Burton Snowboards, which he started in the late 1970s. The documentary looks at that work and at the later years of Carpenter’s life, which were interrupted by health issues including testicular cancer and a rare nerve disease that temporarily paralyzed him — but didn’t take his lust for life. “Life is not about having a pulse,” Carpenter said in a 2015 interview with The New York Times. “It’s about having friends and experiences and living.”WednesdayA scene from “Attica.”Firelight FilmsATTICA (2021) 7:25 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmaker Stanley Nelson revisits the 1971 prison uprising at Attica Correctional Facility, near Buffalo, N.Y., in this documentary, which debuted last week. Taking advantage of five decades’ worth of hindsight, Nelson speaks to people who took part in or were affected by the events firsthand, including reporters, formerly incarcerated people and family members of law enforcement. The revolt, which lasted several days and ended in a brutal retaking of the prison by authorities, was driven by demands for better living conditions — demands that Nelson emphasizes as he explores the event and its violent conclusion. “It’s law and order carried to its extreme, and I think it’s the start of a whole different turn in American history,” Nelson said in a recent interview with The Times. “You can’t see the film without thinking about where we are today.”THE 55TH ANNUAL CMA AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. The singer-songwriter Luke Bryan will host this year’s edition of the Country Music Association Awards from Nashville. The nominees for the entertainer of the year award, perhaps the biggest of the night, are Eric Church, Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton and Carrie Underwood. All five are scheduled to perform or present during the ceremony. Other performers on the bill include Jennifer Hudson, Keith Urban, Zac Brown Band and Brothers Osborne.ThursdayPATHS OF GLORY (1957) 6:15 p.m. on TCM. Typical war movies find drama in deadly missions taken on by extraordinary soldiers. Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory” finds drama in what a group of soldiers can’t — or won’t — do. Kirk Douglas stars as a French army colonel in World War I whose men are sent on an impossible mission. When the mission doesn’t pan out, he’s forced to defend his soldiers against accusations of cowardice from military leadership. The result is a film that “has the impact of hard reality, mainly because its frank avowal of agonizing, uncompensated injustice is pursued to the bitter, tragic end,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times in 1957. “Kubrick’s sullen camera,” Crowther added, “bores directly into the minds of scheming men and into the hearts of patient, frightened soldiers who have to accept orders to die.”FridayKEVIN GARNETT: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE 8 p.m. on Showtime. The subtitle of this sports documentary is a reference to words yelled by its subject, the basketball star Kevin Garnett, in an on-court interview in 2008 as confetti rained down. It was a moment of triumph: The Boston Celtics had just won a championship game against the Los Angeles Lakers. (One might worry, rewatching the moment, that he’s going to swallow some of that confetti.) The documentary looks at how Garnett got to that moment, and where he’s gone since, through interviews with basketball figures including Paul Pierce, Doc Rivers and Allen Iverson, and through reams of archival footage.SaturdayCHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005) 5:30 p.m. on TNT. Timothée Chalamet devotees ate up pictures of him dressed as a young Willy Wonka last month. The images came from the set of “Wonka,” an upcoming prequel movie that promises to give Roald Dahl’s weird chocolatier a back story. It won’t be the first film to try that: This 2005 take on “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which was directed by the filmic confectioner Tim Burton and starred Johnny Depp, gave its Wonka a back story through flashbacks to a childhood spent under the thumb of a mean, sugar-averse dentist father (Christopher Lee). In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott called Burton’s adaptation “wondrous and flawed.” While the film’s attempt to give Wonka an illuminating past flounders, Scott wrote, the movie “succeeds in doing what far too few films aimed primarily at children even know how to attempt anymore, which is to feed — even to glut — the youthful appetite for aesthetic surprise.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    ‘Insecure’ Season 5 Episode 3: Slow Start to Fatherhood

    This week, Lawrence learns that fatherhood may not look like what he imagined.Season 5 Episode 3: Pressure, Okay?!At the end of the season premiere of “Insecure,” Issa broke up with Lawrence. This week, we take a peek at what his life has been like since then.Last season, Lawrence landed his dream job. The only problem? It was in San Francisco and his life was in Los Angeles. At the same time he was finally making strides in his career, he and Issa were finally mending their relationship after their previous breakup. Issa even volunteered to move to San Francisco so they could start a new life together.But then there was Condola. We all started out liking her — she arrived in Issa’s life at a time when Molly was not prioritizing their friendship. She was kind, smart and helpful. Even when Condola had an affair with Lawrence, it wasn’t ruinous. She informed Issa — who took the news with a brave face — and stepped back, freeing Lawrence to set his sights on Issa. We watched the show’s original couple glow onscreen and fall in love again.Then came the phone call: Condola was pregnant. That is where we left her in Season 4.Now she has had a healthy baby boy named Elijah Mustafa, like her grandfather, as her sister, (played by Keke Palmer), lets Lawrence know when he arrives at the hospital. It was the first sign that Lawrence might not have as much input into his son’s upbringing as he wanted or expected. There would be others soon enough.Lawrence seems to have gained the confidence and self-assurance he was lacking professionally in the early seasons — he’s had a bit of a glow up. He’s taking charge on accounts at work and he seems in control of what he wants to do, which has not always been the case. While on a date, he finds out, via text, that his baby has been born, and he blurts out the news to the lady he’s with.“I guess my baby was just born?” he said, confused.“Can you imagine?” she says, as if he had uttered an incomprehensible joke.He drops a fistful of cash onto the table and heads for L.A. When he arrives at the hospital, Condola is holding their son in her arms with her sister and her mother, played by the tremendous Lela Rochon (“Waiting to Exhale,” “Boomerang”), beside her. It becomes clear that Condola’s family has provided most of the support during her pregnancy while Lawrence has been unattached and living his life — the tension in the hospital room reflects that inequity.Lawrence doesn’t seem to like his son’s name, but he accepts it begrudgingly. When he finally holds the baby, his face is illuminated with an emotion that initially appears to be joy but soon turns into something sadder. Is he disappointed to have missed the birth? Realizing how complicated it will be to stay involved in the boy’s life, given Condola and her family’s feelings about him? Still struggling to accept that his son is named Mustafa?One thing is clear: Lawrence wants to be there for his son. But what’s less apparent is whether he understands what that actually looks like or what he’ll have to give up in order to do it. While Condola is sleep deprived, breastfeeding and managing her newborn’s schedule, he’s living in San Francisco, working late and going on dates. Flying to Los Angeles once a week is not fatherhood, especially when you occasionally cancel the trip at the last minute and blame work.More tension arises when Condola and Lawrence go together to Tiffany and Derek’s party for their daughter. Lawrence initially seemed reluctant to go with Condola, but he obliged when she, seemingly extending an olive branch, clarified that they’ll go together with their child.The party is fly, as can be expected from Tiffany and Derek. Kelli is MCing the event in a tuxedo to match the birthday girl’s, and there’s a Pepper Pig — not Peppa, Pepper (“with the E and R”), played by Kelli’s stoner cousin in a pink pig costume. But things go sideways when Lawrence feeds Elijah what he calls “mush,” alarming Condola.“I haven’t introduced solid foods yet!” she exclaims, and Lawrence asks her to let it go. She asks him to hand over Elijah (who Lawrence just calls “Jah”) and it quickly turns into a whole scene, with Condola yelling “give me my baby” and Lawrence objecting that Elijah is his son, too.Even after Derek intervenes, Lawrence can’t seem to articulate his frustration beyond “that’s my baby, too.” He seems to have conflated making a baby with raising a baby, and feels entitled to spend time with Elijah without knowing him or doing much to care for him.Derek suggests that Lawrence not antagonize Condola or add stress to the situation. It’s solid advice that Lawrence ignores later when things finally come to a head, after Condola rescinds her agreement to let him keep Elijah overnight. Lawrence breaks and lets out all of his resentment toward her.“I’m going to be there for my baby, with or without you,” he says contemptuously.Condola asks him to leave and he does, but on the flight back to San Francisco, severe turbulence terrifies Lawrence and the rest of the passengers. It seems a near-death experience can puncture the ego — after he gets home, he calls Condola and apologizes for his behavior. They are tired, and both seem ready to move past the tension and figure out a more cohesive way forward. But what that actually looks like is anyone’s guess.This episode illustrates that for all of his professional achievements, Lawrence has remained emotionally stagnant. He doesn’t trust Condola and she doesn’t trust him, especially with their son. He also resents Condola for deciding to have a baby without him — as if she conceived on her own — and tells her so. He does not like that she named the child without consulting him and that she won’t bend to his schedule. He tells his friend Chad, a fan favorite, that he is disappointed in how fatherhood has turned out for him.“This is just not what I planned for my first kid, man,” Lawrence gripes.“Everybody got a plan until they get punched my guy,” Chad responds, a riff on the Mike Tyson quote. (“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”)It is sad to watch Lawrence struggle into fatherhood. But I can’t help but be happy for Issa, who made the tough call of not subscribing to this life with him. Here’s hoping that Lawrence can let go of the life that he thinks he should have and learn to embrace the journey in front of him. More

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    ‘Succession’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 4: Meep-Meep

    After last week’s punishingly bleak episode, this week “Succession” brought some much-needed comic relief alongside the ongoing melodrama.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Lion in the Meadow’Last week’s punishingly bleak “Succession” episode was maybe the roughest since Season 2’s “Hunting” (a.k.a.“Boar on the Floor”). But as often happens in this series, this week’s episode pulls back a bit, bringing some much-needed comic relief alongside the ongoing melodrama. In “Lion in the Meadow,” the Roys take a break from scorching the Earth and get back to more subtle power plays, using schoolyard insults and small gestures of disrespect to needle each other. It’s all so oddly delightful.The pettiness comes early and often. When Kendall has to join a Waystar conference call to strategize about the upcoming shareholders’ meeting, he uses an unprintable variation on “Little Lord Fauntleroy” as his sign-on (which is then repeated, hilariously, when he abruptly hangs up). Later, when he’s asked to talk with Logan briefly on a private airstrip tarmac, before they both meet up with a nervous Waystar investor, Kendall zooms off to get to the meeting first, leaving the message, “Tell Dad, ‘Meep-meep’ … It’s from ‘Road Runner.’” For the most part, that’s the level of the attacks and counterattacks this week.The investor in question is Josh Aaronson (Adrien Brody), who owns about 4 percent of Waystar — a holding which, he complains, has lost 10 percent of its value since Kendall started giving news conferences. If Josh is going to back the Roys over Sandy and Stewy at the shareholders’ meeting, he needs to know how far this family feud will go. Does Kendall really want his father in jail? Does Logan really think his son is a mentally ill drug addict? How does this all end? Can the Roys maybe “close up the outrage shop”?There’s another reason Josh invites Logan and Kendall to join him at his sprawling estate. He needs to know if they think of him as a smart guy who knows what to do with his money — and is thus owed some respect — or as some speculator who got lucky, and who only has value because of what he can buy. Is he really an important part of their business? Is he a part of this Waystar family?The biggest chunk of this episode features these three guys putting on a show for each other. Josh tries to tease a little honesty out of the Roys, while Logan and Kendall pretend they’re still a loving family running a viable business, and wielding acumen no outsider can match. What makes these scenes so absorbing is that it’s not too hard to imagine Kendall, and maybe even Logan, wanting to believe the fantasy they’re selling. As they sit side by side in their matching black baseball caps — with Logan saying he can still see his son in charge of Waystar someday, and Kendall lovingly calling his old man “geezer” — they almost seem to be playing roles they wish were real.It doesn’t last. The first few times Josh steps away, the Roys maintain stony silence. Later, as they walk back to the main house through some exhaustingly bumpy hills, Josh leaves the two behind and they start making threats, each insisting the other is playing with a weak hand.Then Logan gets physically ill and the game is up. Josh makes it clear he can only back the Roys if Logan is running things, and seeing the patriarch stumble spooks him — as does Kendall’s attempt to keep talking business while his father is sick. The first cue that these three weren’t on the same page came earlier in the day, when Kendall called the Beatles a “great band” and Josh and Logan both said they’re just a “good band.” The lines were drawn then. Kendall never could convince Josh to cross them.Beyond the vigorous one-upmanship on the beach, what makes this episode so lively is that much of it is spent with the two most reliably comic “Succession” characters: Greg and Tom.Greg is persuaded to meet with Logan, who offers him a drink and then exasperatedly calls in his assistant to sweeten the nervous, indecisive kid’s cocktail with Coca-Cola. (The sound of the soda can opening is like a tiny rebuke to Greg’s manly ambitions.) Logan lets his great-nephew know that he has a little leverage over Waystar right now, and that he needs to use it wisely. Greg, though, is too shaky to assert himself. He keeps getting distracted by his beverage, calling it “strong for a man” and reflecting on the hard-drinking olden days, saying, “I don’t know how you did it back in the ’60s. Different times indeed. Better times? Not for all.”As for Tom, he’s been spending his time lately trying to pick out a good prison for himself and indulging in gallows humor, laughing that his co-workers are calling him “Terminal Tom.” Finally he breaks down in front of Shiv, dropping his fake-courage and musing anxiously about his future life behind bars.“What if I forget to burp the toilet wine?” he frets. “How late can I read? When is lights-out?”There’s a good contrast between the Logan/Kendall/Josh scenes — featuring three guys comfortable with flexing — and the much sillier confrontation in this episode between Tom and Greg. When Tom tries to get his former lackey to make a clear decision on what he wants, Greg finally admits that he’d like to be moved into a leadership position in Waystar’s theme parks division. Tom then moans again about jail before trying to wrestle with Greg, snarling, “Let’s fight like chickens!”Greg refuses, shouting, “I don’t want to do it,” prompting Tom to reply, “Neither do I, Greg!” He tries to turn this into avuncular advice saying, “You’re so hard to riff with. That is a big career obstacle.”But that “neither do I” may be the most honest moment Tom has had in this show. Guys like Logan genuinely enjoy a bloody fray. Guys like Tom only like it when they’re winning.Due DiligenceThe three other Roy children all get moments in the spotlight this week, too. While Kendall and Logan are strutting by the sea, Shiv is back at the office hustling to execute some of her dad’s big plans. These include interfering with ATN’s editorial independence by suggesting the news team take a harder line on the presidential administration. For her trouble, she gets a cranky phone call from her father, who is annoyed that the other executives are complaining about her. “I don’t need another toothache,” he growls. Logan also reminds Shiv, somewhat ominously, that no position he takes is set in stone. “Nothing is a line,” he says. “Everything, everywhere, is always moving, forever.”Meanwhile, Connor is still figuring out what he can ask for in exchange for being publicly loyal to Logan. He nixes Shiv’s idea that he become a host on one of Waystar’s travel and cuisine shows, because he still has presidential ambitions and he doesn’t think that spitting out wine on cable TV is going to help his numbers in the Rust Belt. Currently his team is angling for 2024; Connor assumes the current president — who everyone calls “the Raisin” — is going to get re-elected. But who knows? Maybe if Connor resumes his campaign in earnest, he can also help with Shiv’s White House problem.As for Roman, he is initially distracted by the news that Gerri is going on a date. (“With who?” he asks, incredulously. “Montgomery Clift? The Ghost of Christmas Past?”) Once he gets past that, he suggests a particularly nasty way to take down Kendall: By locating “Tattoo Man,” a down on his luck guy his brother once paid to tattoo his initials on his forehead, while the siblings were on an “ironic” New Orleans bar crawl. The man has since had the tattoo removed, but Roman eventually persuades him to provide Waystar with an old picture, which Gerri suggests Roman keep under wraps for now. She advises him to start asking himself, with every bold move or dirty trick, “How does this advance my position?” More

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    Review: ‘Gnit’ Seeks Itself in a Mist of Magic and Mischief

    Will Eno’s inward-looking incarnation of “Peer Gynt” steps out of Ibsen’s shadow just as Ibsen shrugged off elements of the original fairy tale.We know the formula of the fairy tale: There is often a youth, sometimes a journey and always a touch of the fantastical to convey a moral or theme. Since we know the classic tropes from our childhood bedtime stories — don’t deviate from the path, be wary of witches, fear trolls — to contemporize a fairy tale is to shade these narrative standbys, coloring in the context of the time, updating the tone and plot to challenge our expectations.In 1867 Henrik Ibsen did just that, putting his own experimental, modernist spin on the Norwegian story of Peer Gynt to create a timeless narrative of self-discovery — in the form of a five-act play in verse, no less. In Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” the title character is a lazy, selfish liar who is a headache to his poor, sick mother. When he goes to a wedding to steal away the bride — an old flame — only to fall instantly in love with another woman at the wedding, the town turns against him for his troublemaking. So he flees, and his meanderings lead him to odd characters and even odder situations — encounters with magical beings, thieves and asylum patients.The playwright Will Eno puts his own stamp on Ibsen’s version in “Gnit,” which opened at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn on Sunday night. Portraying the protagonist as a listless young man on a search for self, Eno ends up with a funny story that is myopic in scope — a self-aware and sometimes cloyingly precocious thought experiment in individualism and identity.In “Gnit,” which originally premiered in the Actors Theater of Louisville in 2013, Eno translates Peer Gynt to Peter Gnit (that’s pronounced “Guh-nit”; you’re welcome) and consolidates many of the other characters so that a cast of six can represent a whole town. That’s one of the tricky parts of Ibsen’s text — the long list of characters, the insistent verse, the constant setting shifts, the frequent and abrupt dips into the absurd and surreal.Eno’s text takes a route of calculated whimsy: Ibsen’s trolls are changed to real estate agents, characters make knowing references to the original story and the dialogue is tuned to a cheeky deadpan. Playing off Eno’s heightened sense of language and pacing, Oliver Butler opts for comically stylized direction in this production by the Theater for a New Audience. The actors’ movement and intonation are stiff and curiously robotic, and the lines move with the rapid Ping-Pong tempo of the dialogue in an episode of “Gilmore Girls.”Joe Curnutte and Deborah Hedwall in the Theater for a New Audience production.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m on a journey to discover, to uncover, the authentic self,” Peter tells his mother.Her stone-dry response: “Yeah? Get some milk while you’re out.” Which isn’t to say it’s not funny — in fact, the work is genuinely hilarious, the turns are unpredictable and the performers, especially the priceless Deborah Hedwall as Mother Gynt, Jordan Bellow as several different characters, and of course Joe Curnutte in the lead role, seem to effortlessly hit their cues. (David Shih, who plays various townspeople at once, and spends most of the show in conversation with himself like a mini one-man show within the show, struggles to convey the multitude of tones and personalities and accents, and the novelty of the joke quickly wears off.)But Eno’s self-consciously idiosyncratic, academic style eventually gets old somewhere between the nuptial kidnapping and a trip to Egypt. Offbeat, Beckett-esque ruminations and existential querying are common in Eno’s works — including the poignant “Wakey, Wakey” and his popular Pulitzer Prize finalist, “Thom Pain (based on nothing).” So his adaptation brings out the big-picture questions Ibsen had in his original, about the ways we form, and own up to, our “authentic self.” Eno’s narrow and incessant philosophizing, however, quickly limits the play from exploring other themes that may have otherwise proved more fruitful.Ibsen’s incarnation of the fairy tale, for example, also works as a social satire of a community set at odds with its individuals and that emphasizes status over human empathy. Though the skeleton of that satire is visible in Eno’s version, “Gnit” does little to examine or expand it from Ibsen’s time to the present. Likewise, there could be a dissection of gender, a critique of class hierarchies, a sendup of this genre of storytelling itself.There’s magic in Kimie Nishikawa’s set of verdant rolling hills with a valley in the center, and periodically the facades of little cottages descend from the ceiling. Nishikawa’s hills, which the cast members travel among, through and around as they enter and exit scenes, draw the eyes to the pastoral scene and also provide a sense of Peter’s extensive journeying.This isn’t Norway, though. And it doesn’t seem to be the 19th century either. In fact, everything about the setting and characters is vague, which leads us yet again to the question of what Eno is trying to achieve with his adaptation?“There is a limit to the magic powers of language,” Peter says as he tells a story to his dying mother. The lesson, that cleverness can fail when wordplay and chin-stroking ruminations distract, is one that Eno himself could have taken to heart. “Gnit” is brainy and full of rhetorical magic, but with more dimension and greater relevance it could be spellbinding.GnitThrough Nov. 21 at the Theater for a New Audience, Brooklyn; tfana.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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    An Indigenous Canadian Director Channels Traumatic Memories Into Film

    Tracey Deer based “Beans” on her experiences as a child during the 1990 Oka crisis, a confrontation between the Mohawk people and the government.Tracey Deer can still remember the sound of rocks hitting the car, her panicked mother’s orders to “Get down!” and the loud smash as a back passenger window shattered, showering glass over her screaming little sister.Deer, an Indigenous Canadian filmmaker, was only 12 on Aug. 28, 1990, when a white mob hurled stones and racial insults at vehicles filled with Mohawk women, children and the elderly, all trying to evacuate a reservation near Montreal. The Oka crisis, a dispute between Canadian authorities and the Mohawk people over land rights, was reaching its height, and the frightened children crouched on the floor until Deer’s mother could drive on.“My sense of safety was stolen from me,” Deer said. “My sense of self-worth, as of that moment, was nonexistent.” But after spending most of her adolescence consumed by anger, she said in a video interview, “I ended up finding a way to channel that instead into my drive to prove all those people wrong.”One result is “Beans,” her first narrative feature, which was named best picture at the Canadian Screen Awards this year and has collected more than 20 prizes on the film-festival circuit. The newly released drama is a long-sought milestone for Deer, 43, a screenwriter, director, documentarian and television showrunner. (She was a creator of the comedy-drama series “Mohawk Girls,” streaming on Peacock, as well as a writer for “Anne With an E” on Netflix.)A fictionalized version of her experiences, the film focuses on a bright, ambitious Mohawk girl, nicknamed Beans (portrayed by the Mohawk actress Kiawentiio). She lives with her family on the Kahnawake reserve, as Deer did, and has applied to enter seventh grade at an elite, mostly white academy that’s similar to the school Deer went to before graduating from Dartmouth.“I wanted to be the one to tell the story,” Kiawentiio (pronounced Ghee-ah-wen-DEE-o) said via video from Canada, where she was shooting the new live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series for Netflix. Thirteen while filming “Beans,” she felt a personal connection to the history, having grown up in Akwesasne, a reserve not far from the conflict. “A lot of people from my community went there and were helping,” said Kiawentiio, whose own parents were teenagers at the time.Violah Beauvais, left, and Kiawentiio in a scene from Deer’s film.Sebastien Raymond/FilmriseBeans’ journey begins when she is caught up in the real protests that unfolded after the mayor of Oka, a town near Montreal, announced plans to expand a golf course onto land containing a sacred Mohawk burial ground. Devastated by the violence that ensues — she is present when gunfire erupts at a confrontation between Mohawk demonstrators and the police, precipitating the 78-day crisis — Beans falls in with a rough crowd of Mohawk teenagers. They include a charismatic boy who tries to force her to perform oral sex; the scene is based on a sexual assault Deer experienced when she was 20.“It’s a big story,” said Anne-Marie Gélinas, founder of EMAfilms, which produced the drama. “And Tracey’s challenge was to talk about, of course, the bullies outside,” which in the film include the government and real-estate developers. But, Gélinas added in a video call, “she also wanted to talk about the bullies inside her community.”Although Beans’ struggles relate specifically to her time and place, they are likely to resonate with anyone who has raised an adolescent — or been one. When Beans practices profanity in front of her bedroom mirror, smiling proudly when she finally utters a curse, it’s impossible not to notice the doll and stuffed animals still on her bureau. And any viewer will be alarmed when a tough older girl encourages Beans to harm herself so she will be impervious to the pain inflicted by others.“It doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of the Oka crisis,” Deer said, adding that the character is coming of age “in a tumultuous, unwelcoming world that is indicative of where we currently are.”An incident during filming reinforced that view. Deer shot “Beans” at several spots where the historical events occurred, including the Honoré Mercier Bridge, which Mohawk demonstrators blockaded during the crisis. It’s where the rock-throwing confrontation, recreated in the film, took place as well. When Deer began shooting in 2019, the structure was partly closed for maintenance. But some motorists, she said, assumed the movie crew had shut down the route.“They were beeping and yelling at us and revving their engines,” said Deer, who added that the occupants of one car began shouting racial slurs. Thirty years after the Oka crisis, she said, “the same kind of moment played out.”To show that she was not distorting the historical backdrop, Deer used archival footage throughout the film, in one case inserting an actor into the Mohawk protesters in a 1990 news clip. “Nobody remembered it to be so violent, so negative, so traumatic,” Gélinas said, describing audiences’ reactions in Canada, where the response to “Beans” has been overwhelmingly positive.Although the Oka conflict ended in September 1990 with the cancellation of the golf course expansion, disputes over the land rights continue. But in the Canadian cultural sphere, the concerns of Indigenous people are gaining increased attention, said Jesse Wente, chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts and executive director of the Indigenous Screen Office in Toronto. (The organization supports Native film projects but did not contribute to the financing of “Beans.”)“I think what you’re seeing is maybe an industry that is so ravenous for stories that it’s realized it has to open the gates beyond its usual suspects,” Wente, who is Anishinaabe, said in a phone interview. He added that while Indigenous representation in the Canadian film industry had been largely confined to documentaries until recent years, artists like Deer were now delving into many genres. “What that means is that Indigenous cinema is about to become commercial in a way it never was,” he said.Likening Deer’s film to Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” Wente said, “‘Beans’ is exactly what happens when you empower storytellers from a community who’ve had stories told about them forever, but rarely have had the opportunity to tell them themselves.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Introduces a New Donald Trump

    James Austin Johnson took on the role of Trump in an episode that also featured appearances by Dionne Warwick and Tracy Morgan. Kieran Culkin of “Succession” was the host.The last time Cecily Strong played the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on “Saturday Night Live,” it seemed like she might be saying goodbye to her longtime TV home. (She did, after all, end the segment by singing “My Way” and dousing herself in a giant box of wine.)But to the benefit of the show, Strong did not leave “S.N.L.,” and she was back tonight playing Pirro in the show’s cold open. She’d get a more memorable moment in the spotlight later in the night — for now, the segment belonged to a rookie cast member, James Austin Johnson, who has rapidly become one of “S.N.L.”’s most versatile celebrity impressionists and brought his capable sendup of former president Donald J. Trump to the program for the first time.Strong began by interviewing a guest she introduced as “an American brave enough to stand up and say, screw you science — I know Joe Rogan.” That turned out to be Pete Davidson playing the Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this week and confirmed, in a combative interview on Friday, that he was not vaccinated.Davidson, as Rodgers, defended his ambiguous remarks about his vaccination status. “I never lied,” he said. “I took all my teammates into a huddle, got all their faces three inches away from my wet mouth, and told them trust me, I’m more or less immunized. Go team!”He added, “At the end of the day, my record is still 7-1. Meaning, of the eight people I’ve infected, seven are fine.”Strong also interviewed Alex Moffat, playing Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor-elect of Virginia. When she asked him to provide a definition of critical race theory, Moffat answered, “It’s simple: It’s what got me elected.” Pressed for more clarity, Moffat added, “It’s not important. What’s important is parents.”He introduced Heidi Gardner as a member of his parental task force on education, and she cited some of the books she wanted removed from the state’s curriculum, including “Pride and Prejudice” (“Prejudice is fine, but pride is a term that has been co-opted by the gays,” Gardner said) and “The Great Gatsby” (“Too much jazz”).Strong brought out her surprise final guest: Trump, as played by Johnson (who is already holding down the recurring role of President Biden on “S.N.L.”).“I just wanted to congratulate Glenn Youngkin and mostly myself on a tremendous victory in Virginia,” Johnson said. “You know what Glenn? We did it together.”Moffat uncomfortably replied, “You don’t have to say that.”Johnson went on to deliver a discursive monologue, complete with a “Pardon the Interruption”-style topic list and countdown clock, in which he rambled on about “Star Wars” (He claimed to have told George Lucas, “You need to do it with swords — the lasers are not enough”), “Dune,” Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa, “Game of Thrones” and, finally, the state of Virginia.An impressed Strong asked him, “How do you keep that all in your brain?”Johnson answered, “I had my ears sealed so nothing comes in or out.”Opening Monologue of the WeekKieran Culkin, who plays the sarcastic media scion Roman Roy on HBO’s “Succession,” naturally used his opening monologue to crack some jokes about his role on that hit series. Roman, he said, is “one of the nicer characters on the show — which still makes him one of the Top 10 worst humans on TV.”Culkin also reminded viewers that he had previously appeared on “S.N.L.” some 30 years ago when his brother Macaulay had hosted the program, and that 9-year-old Kieran had been hoisted aloft by grown-up cast members during the show’s good nights. Did a 39-year-old Kieran repeat the tradition at the end of this weekend’s broadcast? You’ll just have to watch and see. (OK, fine, he did repeat it.)Surprise Celebrity Cameo of the WeekThis is why you watch an “S.N.L.” sketch all the way to the end. It seemed, at first, like a typical outing of “The Dionne Warwick Talk Show,” a recurring segment in which Ego Nwodim plays a delightfully kooky version of that enduring pop singer. And as usual, she was joined by guests that she doesn’t recognize or particularly care about, including Chloe Fineman as Miley Cyrus, Culkin as Jason Mraz and Ed Sheeran as Ed Sheeran.But just as the sketch seemed to be winding down, Nwodim said, “I’m sick and tired of interviewing people who are not icons. Please welcome: me.” And out strode the real-life Warwick, who sat down in a chair opposite her. Nwodim asked the singer, “Dionne, why are you perfect?” Warwick replied, “My darling, I am not perfect. I’m just very, very good.” Their brief duet of “What the World Needs Now” that followed was almost too generous but we’ll take it anyway.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the passage of President Biden’s infrastructure plan in the House of Representatives, and the results of Tuesday’s elections.Jost began:Our top story tonight, like it’s been for as long as I can remember: infrastructure. Last night, the House passed President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which should be enough to clean as many as two of LaGuardia’s bathrooms. The infrastructure bill will also expand internet access across the U.S., which is great news, because when has more internet ever been bad for America? [His screen displays a photo of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.]Che continued:Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia governor’s race. But on the bright side, losers from Virginia usually get a statue. [His screen displays a photo of a monument to Robert E. Lee.] Political experts say that the Republican victory in Virginia’s governor’s race was fueled by white women who didn’t go to college. Which just so happens to be the same exact group I target on Tinder.Weekend Update Character of the WeekHere, as promised, was Cecily Strong’s true standout moment from the episode.At the Weekend Update desk, Jost began with a prelude about the recent Supreme Court arguments on a restrictive Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. He then introduced Strong as a character called Goober the Clown Who Had an Abortion When She Was 23.While she sprayed Jost with water from a trick boutonniere and tried to make balloon animals, Strong talked about how common it is for clowns to have abortions and how they feel more comfortable discussing the subject with one another when they learn that other clowns have had them. It was not the easiest subject to mine for comedy. But as Strong explained, describing a doctor who jokingly asked if she had gotten pregnant on her way over to the clinic, “It’s not like a funny ha-ha joke, but like a funny, you’re not an awful person and your life isn’t over now joke. The best kind.” More

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    JoAnna Cameron, an Early Female Superhero on TV, Is Dead at 73

    In addition to achieving Saturday morning fame as Isis, she was said to have appeared in more national television commercials than anyone in advertising history.JoAnna Cameron, who in the 1970s portrayed Isis, the first female character on television with superpowers, and appeared in more national network television commercials than anyone else, died on Oct. 15 in Oahu, Hawaii. She was 73. The cause was complications of a stroke, said Joanna Pang Atkins, who starred with Ms. Cameron on the Saturday morning children’s series “Isis.”Ms. Cameron, who broke into the movies in 1969 with a small part in a Bob Hope film, blazed a trail when she arrived on the small screen as Isis in September 1975, two months before Lynda Carter made her first appearance as Wonder Woman. “The Bionic Woman,” starring Lindsay Wagner, began in January 1976.“Isis” starred Ms. Cameron as Andrea Thomas, a high school science teacher who had acquired the powers of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of healing and magic. Running with the speed of a gazelle, flying like a falcon and displaying superhuman strength, she used her extraordinary powers to fight crime.The series ran on CBS from 1975 to 1977; reruns were later syndicated as “The Secrets of Isis.”Ms. Cameron’s other television roles included appearances on “Columbo,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors.”A lithe brunette, she also received tremendous exposure as a television model for scores of commercial products. The Guinness Book of World Records said in 1979 that she had appeared in more than 100 commercials on network television, more than anyone else in advertising history.Advertisers spent more than $100 million “using JoAnna as the beauteous centerpiece of their commercials for cosmetics, shampoo, wine, beer, pantyhose and breath freshener,” TV Guide reported in 1979, adding that “she certainly has a face that can sell a product.”Ms. Cameron was outdoorsy and athletic, and she appeared in commercials skiing, scuba diving, piloting a jet, driving a racecar and romping through a field of flowers. She flew with the Blue Angels and worked to promote the United States Navy. But many of her other commercials were for personal products. In an ad for pantyhose, she struck a Mrs. Robinson-like pose. In a cigarette spot, she smoked. She also made a brief foray into directing commercials, but did not enjoy it.When she appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show,” Mr. Griffin said that if all her commercials were strung together, they would run for 150 hours, or six days of continuous viewing. He noted that advertisers said she had “the perfect face,” although he did not specify what that meant.When Mr. Griffin asked her if she felt pretty, she demurred. “Pretty,” she said, “comes from being healthy and feeling good about who you are and what you do.”Patricia Kara Cameron was born on Sept. 20, 1948, in Greeley, Colo., where her parents, Harold and Erna (Borgens) Cameron, operated a drive-in restaurant.She showed an interest in acting from an early age. While in high school, she worked with the Little Theater at Colorado State College, where she had a part in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Moving to California in the 1960s, she worked part time at Disneyland as a tour guide. She was a winning contestant on “The Dating Game” and JoAnna finalist on the televised beauty pageant “The Dream Girl of 1967.”Her big break came when she became friends with Bob Hope’s daughter, Linda. Mr. Hope cast her in “How to Commit Marriage” (1969), a comedy in which he starred with Jackie Gleason and Jane Wyman.On Mr. Gleason’s advice, she dropped the name Patricia and started calling herself JoAnna Cameron, although her screen credits list her variously as Jo Anna Cameron, Joanna K. Cameron, Joanna Kara Cameron and Joanna Cameron.Her other movies included “Pretty Maids All in a Row” (1971) and “B.S. I Love You” (1971). She was under consideration for the role of Jenny Cavilleri in “Love Story” (1970), but it went to Ali MacGraw.After her last movie, in 1980, she moved permanently to Hawaii, where she had often visited. She lived a quiet and anonymous life there, a friend in Hawaii said by email, and few people knew about her Hollywood career or that she had starred in “Isis.”With a nursing degree she had earned in California, she turned to patient care, working in private facilities or patients’ homes and providing comfort and care — similar to hospice work.She also had a marketing degree, and she later became a marketer for two major hotels. Information about survivors was not immediately available.Asked in a 2002 interview for an “Isis” fan website if she had ever been afraid of being typecast by her role as Isis, she expressed no doubt.“Who’s afraid of being typecast as a superhero?” she responded. “If you have to be typecast, take superhero. Or Egyptian goddess.” More